Am here in a double capacity to bring fraternal solidarity from the Joint Action Front (JAF), a partner with Labour in the Labour and Civil Society Coalition (LASCO) where I run errands as its Secretary, and also from of the Amilcar Cabral Ideological School Movement (ACIS-M), in which am a Co-Coordinator.
Both organisations that I represent here are agreed that the gatherings of ASUU have remained the most consistent, the most visible, and the most inspiring assemblage and practical demonstration of democratic practice. The 20th ASUU NDC has once more showed the enormous potentials of ASUU to provide leadership for the redemption and transformation of our society.
As one of the resource persons in the ASUU Branch level training programme to build ideological clarity and commitment in their membership, in few of its branches that included UI, ABU, UNILAG, LASU and UNIOSUN, I could experience directly the potentials of ASUU to provide leadership for the necessary struggle of the working people and oppressed masses in our country and the Pan African world to defeat the rule of capitalist exploitation and sufferings.
As a learning student of Cabral, we make recourse to realities. Our realities today is that we lack the organised and united forces to lead a struggle for political power and system change. We have to build it if we must make a difference. When we play with such words as Political Alternative, do we really mean it or it is just a rhetorical lamentation? We must organise.
We don’t organise by merely speaking to our mass of working people and oppressed masses through social media because the real people out there are not at that level of critical consciousness to move independently into action, simply because they are suffering. In a thousand year, we will still remain sunk in the chorus – we must organise, which would always end just immediately as the pronouncements were made. Are we in touch with the daily realities of our people? Do we inspire them? Are we actually struggling with the poor masses of our people?
ASUU, you are trying, we salute you for your consistency over the years, but ASUU has to go beyond “we are trying”. There is an objective reality that our Labour movement is weak, our left organisations are even withering, and we are incapable of waging a sustained mass struggle and at the risk of entirely losing the momentum of our movement to the dictate of the State and imperialist forces.
The major challenge is in the realm of practice. The challenge of Political Mobilisation involves building democratic structures all over the country by organising the working people into local committees for a common struggle on a daily basis in view of system change for political power.
THE POOR MASSES IN NIGERIA AND AFRICA NEED ASUU! ASUU MUST BE READY TO UNITE THE WORKING PEOPLE AND OPPRESSED MASSES WITH IDEOLOGY, WITH CRITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS, AND INSPIRE THE STRUGGLE OF OUR PEOPLE THROUGH POPULAR EDUCATION AND MASS ORGANISATION.
THE PEOPLE UNITED CAN NEVER BE DEFEATED!
